INDIAN TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM

Shailesh Nayak and T. Srinivasa Kumar

Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad 500055, India –
Director@incois.gov.in

Commission IV

KEY WORDS: Hazards, Ocean, Database, Modelling, Decision

ABSTRACT:

Tsunami is a system of ocean gravity waves formed as a result of large-scale disturbance of the sea floor that occurs in a relatively
short duration of time. The Indian Ocean is likely to be affected by tsunamis generated mainly by earthquakes from the two potential
source regions, the Andaman-Nicobar-Sumatra Island Arc and the Makran Subduction Zone. A state-of-the-art warning centre has
been established at INCOIS with all the necessary computational and communication infrastructure that enables reception of real-
time data from the network of national and international seismic stations, tide gauges and bottom pressure recorders (BPRs).
Earthquake parameters are computed in the less than 15 minutes of occurrence. A database of pre-run scenarios for travel times and
run-up height has been created using Tunami N2 model. At the time of event, the closest scenario is picked from the database for
generating advisories. Water level data enables confirmation or cancellation of a tsunami. Tsunami bulletins are then generated based
on decision support rules and disseminated to the concerned authorities for action, following a standard operating procedure. The
criteria for generation of advisories (warning/alert/watch) are based on the tsunamigenic potential of an earthquake, travel time (i.e.
time taken by the tsunami wave to reach the particular coast) and likely inundation. The performance of the system was tested on
September 12, 2007 earthquake of magnitude 8.4 off Java coast. The system performed as designed. It was possible to generate
advisories in time for the administration and possible evacuation was avoided.

1. INTRODUCTION

“Tsunami” is a system of ocean gravity waves formed as a

result of large scale disturbance of the sea bed in a short
duration of time, mostly due to earth quake (or volcanic
eruption or submarine landslides). As displaced sea water return
by the force of gravity to an equilibrium position, a series of
oscillations both above and below sea level take place, and
waves are generated which propagate outwards from the source
region. Tsunamigenic zones, the Andaman-Nicobar-Sumatra
Island Arc in the Bay of Bengal and the Makran Subduction
Zone in the North Arabian Sea, that threaten the Indian Ocean
have been identified by considering the historical tsunamis,
earthquakes, their magnitudes, location of the area relative to a
fault (ANSS, 2007; HS, 2007; NGDC, 2007, ISG, 2007;USGS,
2007; Rastogi and Jaiswal, 2006), and also by tsunami
modelling (Figure1).
performance during the Java Earthquake of M 8.4 on September 12,
The Indian coast has recorded few tsunamis in the past.
2007 have been discussed.
However, in spite of infrequent occurrence of tsunamis (about 6
events reported in the 20thcentury) in the Indian Ocean, they
could occur at any time and could be very devastating. The
latest Indian Ocean Tsunami (December 26, 2004) has been the
one of the strongest in the world and the deadliest of all time by
an order ofmagnitude.

The east and west coasts of India and the island regions are
likely to be affected by tsunamis generated mainly due to
earthquakes in these subduction zones. Hence there was a need
for developing Tsunami Warning System.

In this paper, details about various components of tsunami

warning centre, development of the application software and its
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 Figure 1. Tsunamigenic zones in the Indian Ocean

2. TSUNAMI WARNINGSYSTEM

The following are major components of the tsunami

warning system.

2.1 Estimation of EarthquakeParameters

A Network of land-based seismic stations for

earthquake detection and estimation of focal
parameters in the two known tsunamigenic zones is a
prime requirement of the warning

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The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008
centre. INCOIS is receiving real-time seismic data from
international seismic networks as well as from India
Meterological Department (IMD) and has been detecting all
earthquake events occurring in the Indian Ocean in the less than
15 minutes of occurrence. Necessary software have been
installed for real-time data reception, archiving, processing and
auto-location of earthquakes as well as for alert generation and
automatic notification.
2.2 Monitoring of SeaLevel
In order to confirm whether the earthquake has actually
triggered a tsunami, it is essential to measure the change in
water level as near to the fault zone with high accuracy. Bottom
pressure recorders (BPR) are used to detect the propagation of
tsunami waves in open-ocean and consequent sea level changes.
A network of Bottom Pressure Recorders (BPRs) has been
installed close to the tsunamigenic source regions to detect
tsunami, by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT).
These BPRs can detect changes of 1 cm at water depths up to 6
km.
A network of tidal gauges along the coast helps to monitor
progress of tsunami as well as validation of the model scenarios.
Near-real time data is being received from national and
international centres has been received. Necessary software for
real-time reception, display and archiving of tide gauge data has
been developed.
2.3 Tsunami Modelling
The TUNAMI N2 model basically takes the seismic
deformation as input to predict the run-up heights and
inundation levels at coastal regions for a given tsunamigenic
earthquake (Imamura, 2006). The seismic deformation for an
earthquake has been computed using Smylie and Mansinha,
(1971) formulation using the earthquake parameters like
location, focal depth, strike, dip and rake angles, length, width
and slip of the fault plane. At the time of earthquake, only
location, magnitude and focal depth are available immediately.
For operational quantitative tsunami forecast, there needs to be
a method to quickly estimate the travel times and run up based
on the above available parameters. For this purpose, all the
other input parameters such as length, width and slip are
calculated from the magnitude using global relations
(Papazachos et al, 2004). strike angle, dip angle and slip angle
are considered for worst case scenario (strike angle parallel to
trench or coast, dip angle 45 deg, slip angle 90deg).
A database of pre-run scenarios has been created for 1000 unit
sources covering all the tsunamigenic sources in the Indian
Ocean region (Kuwayama, 2006). In the current database each
unit source has a length of 100 km and width of 50 km that
represents a rupture caused by a Mw 7.5 magnitude earthquake
with a slip of 1m. At the time of earthquake occurrence, based
on the location and magnitude of the earthquake, the basic unit
source open ocean propagation scenarios in scenario database
are selected to merge and scaled up/down using scaling
relations.
2.4 High Resolution Data Base on Bathymetry and Coastal
Topography
Generating and updating a high resolution database on
bathymetry, coastal topography, coastal land use, coastal
vulnerability as well as historic data base on tsunami and storm
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surge to prepare and update storm surge/tsunami hazard maps.
The accuracy of model predictions is directly related to the
quality of the data used to create the bathymetry and topography
of the model area.
Coastal Bathymetry is the prime determinant of the height of the
tsunami wave or storm surge as it approaches the coast. High
resolution coastal bathymetry is thus the key input for various
tsunami and storm surge prediction models. Preliminary
Surveys have already been conducted to acquire high-resolution
bathymetry for a few vulnerable areas of the coastline. Naval
Hydrographic Office (NHO) has been providing detailed
bathymetry data.
Topography of the entire coastline of the country is required at
1:25000-scale with contours at intervals of 0.5 m to 2 m up to
20 m contour interval. Preliminary maps have been prepared of
coastal topography using CARTOSAT-1 stereo data for the
Indian coast. The National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA)
has been mapping the topography of about 15, 000 Sq km area
with airborne LIDAR & Digital Camera data in conjunction
with GPS control survey using photogrammetric techniques.
3000 sq km area has already been mapped. These products have
been used to prepare coastal vulnerabilitymaps.
2.5 WarningCentre
A dedicated 24 x 7 operating Tsunami Warning Centre
comprising necessary computational, communication and
technical support infrastructure as well as a robust application
software that facilitates data reception, display, analysis,
modelling, and decision support system for generation of
tsunami advisories following a standard operating procedure has
been established. The warning centre continuously monitors
seismic activity in the two tsunamigenic source regions and sea
level through the network of national and international seismic
stations as well as tide gauges and bottom pressure recorders
(BPR’s). The monitoring of water level enables confirmation or
cancellation of a tsunami. A custom-built software application
generates alarms/alerts whenever a pre-set threshold is crossed.
Tsunami bulletins are then generated based on pre-set decision
support rules and disseminated to the concerned authorities for
action, following a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
3. APPLICATION SOFTWARE USING GEOSPATIAL
TECHNOLOGY
One of the key components of the early warning centre is the
development of application software around GIS technology
that performs the followingoperations:
(i) Acquisition, display and analysis of real time data of
seismic sensors, tide gauges andBPRs.
(ii) Generation of model scenario database for assumed
earthquake parameters as well as Retrieval, Display and
Analysis at the time of anevent.
(iii) Generation, Display and Analysis of Bathymetric Data,
Coastal Topographic Data and VulnerabilityMaps.
(iv) Decision support system for generation of tsunami
advisories following a standard operatingprocedure.
(v) Data warehousing, Data Mining and Data Dissemination
Details of the individual functions are givenbelow:
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008
3.1 Data Acquisition andDisplay
The warning centre currently receives seismic data, tidal data
and BPR data through VSAT links, Internet, and INSAT from
multiple sources. All such data are centrally collected by high
end servers where, it is processed by ETL jobs for loading into
staging database followed by archiving staging database into the
central database periodically.
The requirement is to display observational data (seismic, sea
level) from selected platforms and modelled data (travel time,
run up heights, inundation areas, DTMs, etc.). Other need is to
plot real-time sea-level data overlaid on predicted tidal values at
each specified location. The application software is capable of
performing all the above functions.
3.2 Model ScenarioDatabase
Tunami N2 model has been used to estimate travel time and
run-up height for a particular earthquake. Since the model
cannot be run at the time of an event, due to large computing
time as well as due to non-availability of required fault
parameters in real-time, a database of pre-run scenarios is
essential. At the time of event, the closest scenario is picked
from the database for generating the warning. The output from
the modelling exercise is a huge database (approximate size is 6
Tera bytes) consisting of spatial maps depicting the water level
in the Indian Ocean region at each time-step for about 5000
simulations. The application software has an interface to store,
retrieve, analyze and display the spatial maps from the database.
The spatial layers currently being handled by this application
include fault lines, fault segments for different earthquake
magnitudes, travel time maps, directivity maps, simulation
results for about 1800 coastal forecast points, graphs of model
and observed tsunami wave profiles at each coastal forecast
point, etc. Application Software has a user friendly GUI/control
panel depicted on a spatial canvas of the Indian Ocean Region
through which user can perform GIS operations like navigating
to a desired location, zoom, pan, query, analysis,etc.
3.3 VulnerabilityMaps
Tsunami run-up causes flooding of seawater into the land up to
few km resulting in loss of human life and damage to property.
To minimise such losses, it is imperative to prepare coastal
vulnerability maps indicating the areas likely to be affected due
to flooding and rending damage. Tunami N2 Model has been
customised for the Indian Ocean Region and has been validated
using the December 2004 Tsunami observations. This model
has been run for five historical earthquakes and the predicted
inundation areas are being overlaid on cadastral level maps of
1:5000 scale. The maps are to be used by the central and state
administration responsible for disaster management. These
community-level inundation maps are extremely useful for
assessing the population and infrastructure at risk. These maps
will be provided using the web-GIS interface of the Application
Software.
3.4 Decision Support System and Standard Operating
Procedure
The decision support software is intended to
(i) monitor the online input data from individualsensors,
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(ii) generate automatic alarms based on preset decision rules
for one or many of the input parametersand
(iii) carry out criteria-based analysis for one or many of the
above mentioned input parameters to generate online
advisories (Figure 2).
The criteria for generation of different types of advisories
(warning/alert/watch) for a particular region of the coast are to
be based on the available warning time (i.e. time taken by the
tsunami wave to reach the particular coast). The warning criteria
are based on the premise that coastal areas falling within 60
minutes travel time from a tsunamigenic earthquake source need
to be warned based solely on earthquake information, since
enough time will not be available for confirmation of water
levels from BPRs and tide gauges. Those coastal areas falling
outside the 60 minutes travel time from a tsunamigenic
earthquake source could be put under a watch status and
upgraded to a warning only upon confirmation of water-level
data.
The application software is capable of doing all the desired
functions in addition to generating alerts (as and when each
individual parameter exceeds a critical value) in the form of an
alarm at the warning centre as well as SMS alerts to specified
persons on a mobile phone. Provision in the software is made to
modify threshold value, as and when need arises.
3.5 Data Warehousing, Data Mining andDissemination
This module is capable of organizing the data and storing it in a
centralized storage server with appropriate load balancing. The
entire data is organized using state-of-the-art user friendly
database for storing, analyzing and quick retrieval at the time of
the event. This database is linked to a dedicated tsunami website
through which data/information/advisories are made available to
the users. The website support information in the form of text,
maps and multi-media.
The application software enables dissemination of bulletins to
designated contact points using SMS, e-mails, fax, telephone,
VPNDMS, etc. The entire warning centre infrastructure is
hosted on highly reliable hardware designed for mission critical
applications with necessary redundancies.
4 PERFORMANCE OF THESYSTEM
The system was fully tested on September 12, 2007, when
earthquake of magnitude 8.4 struck near Java.
The performance of the end-to-end system is assessed based on
the
(i) individual performance of the observation sub-systems
(seismic, sea-level) andthe
(ii) performance of the application software sub-systems viz.
display, analysis, modelling, DSS, SOP anddissemination.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Vol. XXXVII. Part B4. Beijing 2008

Figure 2. Standard Operating procedure for generating advisories

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The ultimate measure of the performance of the system is the
accuracy and timeliness of the advisories generated. This can be
assessed using performance indicators such as accuracy of
(i) earthquakedetermination;
(ii) model scenario results viz. travel time and run-up estimates
and
(iii) real-time sea-levelobservations.
The earthquake parameters for the September 12 event were
computed within 13 minutes having initial magnitude 7.9
(USGS initial estimate being 8.0 in 12 minutes). Based on this
magnitude a scenario was picked up from the database and
travel time and run up heights at various coastal forecast points
were estimated. The modelled and observed values are given in
Table1.

One of the most critical aspects of tsunami warning system is to Location Arrival Time (h) Water Level (cm)
estimate earthquake parameters with reasonable accuracy in Estimat Observe Estimat Observe
shortest possible time. The elapsed time is generally less than ed d ed d
15 minutes in most cases. The earthquake location and its Padang 1751 1754 80 60
magnitude are two critical parameters to be estimated so that Coco’s Island 1748 1748 40 30
right scenario can be chosen. While it is important to be able to Sabang 1903 1903 20 30
estimate earthquake parameters within acceptable errors (+/- 0.2 TB3 1903 1913 02 01
in magnitude and 30 km in location during initial estimates is TB10A 1931 1941 01 02
considered good for tsunami warning applications), for an TB10 1930 1945 02 02
operational system, it is also extremely important to be able to Port Blair 2010 2013 10 08
do this consistently. To quantify the performance of our system, Chennai 2105 2110 20 18
a comparison has been made with the earthquake parameters
estimates by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for
Table 1: Performance of Tsunami Model
abour 20 consecutive earthquakes. Results show that the desired
performance has been achieved (Figure 3 and 4).
It can be seen from the table that system has performed well
within the limits of acceptable error.

The end-to-end system performed extremely well enabling

reception, display and analysis of the real-time and model data
sets as well as generation and dissemination of timely and
accurate advisories following the standard operating procedure.
This information was used to provide necessary advisories to
the concerned authorities, thus avoiding unnecessary public
evacuation for thisevent.

5 CONCLUDINGREMARKS

Geospatial technology has immensely helped in the design of

early warning system for tsunami. The system is capable of
providing tsunami advisories (earthquake information,
estimated travel times, run up heights, threat zones, etc) for the
entire the IndianOcean.

Figure 3. Comparison of estimation of location errors of

REFERENCES
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HS, 2007. Harvard Seismology, Global Centroid Moment

Tensor Catalog (1976 to present), Indian Ocean,
http://www.globalcmt.org/CMTsearch.html,(Accessed 26thJune
2007).

Imamura, F. 2006, TUNAMI-N2 (Tohoku University’s

Numerical Analysis Model for Investigation of Near Field
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ISC, 2007. International Seismological Centre, Online catalog

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are grateful to Dr. P. S. Goel, Secretary, Ministry
of Earth Sciences for his encouragement and valuable guidance
during the course of development of this system. The authors
express their sincere thanks to colleagues of MoES for their
support in developing thissystem.